After a really fun morning at the beach we checked out the Cannon Beach skatepark. It was kinda janky. I skated the bowl for a bit. Chris had already done like 10 lip tricks before I did a back 50. Most people were messing around on the street course. Then we got booted for not wearing helmets. So lame. Then we got back to our cars and had parking tickets. Even lamer. Oh well, we moved on to another beach.

We ended up at the Bay City Skatepark. Kind of a weird park, but it seemed like everyone ended up liking it. At first I was bumming because everyone was skating the park fast, just going all the way across and doing tricks on the quarter pipes and I really wanted to mess around on the stuff in the middle. It ended up being really fun. Chris was slaying. I guess skating vert has it’s advantages and he was doing every lip trick with ease. Fuzz, Jack and Matt were throwing lofty ollies over the pyramid. Matt’s ollies are seriously so good. Jack was getting gnarly and manualling the big bank. There is so much that happened in this session there is no way I can remember. So I’ll try to just summarize everyone. Matt, huge ollies, 360 flip the hard way over the hip, nollie flip over the hip, front tail and back tail on the mini bump to tall ledge. Fullertron front 5-0 the crazy bank setup, boardslide to fakie on it, tailslides over the pyramid, manual the weird bank maybe. Carleigh ollies both ways over the hip and pop shove to bum out. Nate was slaying. Wallie boardslides, wallies, front/back 50s on the mini bump to tall ledge, the craziest no comply pole jam on the weird slanted flatbar on the edge of the park. I started slow, tried to noseslide across and down the pyramid but never made it to the downhill, some silly mellow bank flip tricks, front 50 the mini bump to tall ledge, wallie boardslide the barrier, back pivot and front 50 on the bank that Dave 5-0d. Rob some lofty bs ollies, his steezy bonelesses. On top of every lip tricks on the qps Chris managed to shred the middle of the park too. Feeble the flat bar, heelflip up the euro. Fuzz skated really good. Cool transfers on the qp to middle section, lofty airs to front disaster, so much more I’m forgetting right now. Really fun session with the exception of Jack knocking his knee out of place and being in a ton of pain. Prior to that he was ripping though. Front noseblunt across the pyramid, front 50 across the euro, manual the weird middle section, a lot I’m forgetting.

First spot of the day was Burnside! Some people had seen it, some hadn’t. Since I’ve never been to Portland before I was one of people that hadn’t ever seen it. Dave, Jack, Josh, Neil and I started on the little mini on the hill in the top photo. It sucked! Axle stalls were hard, unless you are Dave and Jack. Then we went in for the main area. Chris was killing it! He’s the token vert dude on the trip and he skated so hard. Lots of tricks, every trick. I think everyone but Rob took runs in the park. I only took two runs. It wasn’t all that crowded, I was just feeling weird. Everyone else looked good. Dave may have been the one that surprised me the most with his smoothness and large bag of tricks. After awhile we posted up near the parking lot and skated that area. As you can see by the photos a lot went down. What isn’t shown is me skating the parking block below everything. Ha. Ok the narrow new bowl was really fun to carve around in.

Then we moved downtown, hit the food carts, ate food, got kicked out of a fun ledge way too fast then ended up at this fountain spot where we lasted for hours upon hours.

We were literally here for hours. There were multiple people skating it in different ways. I was a part of the ‘treat it like a hip’ crew. Others were doing wallies off part of it or skating the ledge, or dropping in from scary heights. The flip trick the hip session was awesome. Nate did nollie back 270 heel! JP did frontside flip, lots of poppy one foots and nollie bigspin. Carleigh did kickflip even though she was talking with a new friend for a long time. Rob had several of his stylee boneless and some kickflips. I landed almost every flip trick I can do on it. Kickflips both ways, b/s flip, varial flip, hc flip, fakie varial flip, the worst f/s flip ever done I had a blast. Matt killed it with back 50 gap to back 5-0. Jack manualled through the skate stoppers to blunt. Ridiculous. Neil was all over the place. Near the end I began skating the ledge with Carleigh, Matt, Josh, Jack, Rob. Rob did boardslide to manual. I got front 5-0s when I was trying front 50s, a front 50 to front board and maybe technically a smith. Josh had some nice front noses and a front tail or two. Carleigh done did f/s 180 nosegrind a few times. Then we skated around for awhile, hit a shop, got lost and ended up at a huge ramp on the other side of the city.

Nate and I weren’t in the mood for a ramp so we went and skated flat. Well, tried to skate flat. We were so sore and it was not a pretty game. We skated around a little more, but came back to a fun looking session. Josh, Carleigh, Chris, Dave were still skating and ripping. I took a couple of runs and wish I had skated it more. Oh well, at least I beat Nate at SKATE! That was it for the skating on day 2. Long day! Fun day.

We made it to Portland! We flew all the way to Portland to skate spots like the one above! Ha, okay so we landed and had a couple hours to kill before Neil arrived. We went to a bank to curb spot and this was there too. The bank to curb could have been so good, but there was a truck in front of the good area. That didn’t stop Matt from doing some nice ollies, Dave from a pivot to fakie, Fuzz from an ollie I didn’t see behind the truck and a Jack front tail.

Then a couple of us used some piled wood to make this weird manny pad contraption which turned out to be a blast. I am writing this almost a week after the session so it’s really hard to remember what went down. Nate killed it though. Manual first try, nose manual, nose manual turned to switch manual down. So ridiculous. Carleigh ollied up and back 180’d in. Jack did kickflip manual, manual front shove back to manual and more. Chris tried some heelflips up and got close. Fuzz did kickflip up, back 180 in. Front 180 up, f/s halfcab in. I did kickflip up and f/s 180 in. Rob manualled it, no comply manualled it and I want to say nose manual too, but I’m not sure. Oh and back 180 up. I can’t remember what Dave did, but I think it was ollie up and back 180 in, maybe manual too? Then near the end Jack started a funny session off the little electric box into the bank. The box was about 1 foot longer then it looks in the photo so pretty much impossible to get speed. Jack ollied in and I think tail dropped in? Dave and I got dork and did 180s (he’s goofy). I added boneless 90 then took forever to land a funny feeling boneless 270.

Off to a really fun garage we went where we got booted faster then I could ollie up a curb (so we had a couple minutes there).

Then another parking garage where we lasted long enough for several people to do front 5-0’s around a corner curb before we got the boot. That was the end of the skating. Good start!

On the way home from a long day of work where I got up super early I wanted to skate flat for a bit to get the legs into skate mode. I drove by Valmont and the whole east side of the parking lot was vacant so I went there. I started really slow, but ended up getting through most of my basics quickly. Struggled a bit with fakie flips and am considering giving up on treflips. Managed some heelflips which has been rare lately and even a really bad f/s halfcab heel. The treflip sucking had me bumming, but other then that I did ok so I should chill out. Oh and I had some new wheels because Nate insists the ground is bad in Portland and that I would need some. I went with the big ol’ Null superthanes in 52.

This one probably shouldn’t count as an entry, but I guess I did enough tricks to warrant it. I skated about 10 minutes in a parking garage because it was raining. I had dropped India off at ballet and had two hours of free time before I needed to pick her up. I went to the Valmont garage. I started with some slappy stalls on the parking block. Got most of the basics. axles, pivots, feebles both ways. back crooks. I really hate the Leo Laced shoe. Beyond hating. They feel bad for my feet even just wearing them. I bailed a kickflip and left for Meta to get new shoes. Then I ended up talking to John until I picked up India. It probably took me longer to write this then the time I spent skating. Oh well.

Met Dave at Northglenn park around 9am. There were just a few people there. But one really annoying mom training her kids to be the next Ryan Sheckler. It was ridiculous. There were several kids she was yelling at and encouraging them to try harder, go faster, learn this, learn that. Her voice carried so far. I wanted to focus my board. She sucked. Luckily she eventually left. Dave was ripping as usual. Did his boardslide transfer, feeble stall on the jersey barrier, nice lines around the park. I was kinda sucking. Had a fun line with fakie flip on a bank then a boardstall transfer up onto the marble hubba. Then Dave and I began training for street league. I mean trying tricks we wanted to do at Ambulance ditch. Dave did back 3s over the big hip and I did no comply 270s over the little hip.

So off we went. Dave was first and got his back 3 pretty quickly. I went next and after failing at b/s flips on the far bank for a bit the line came relatively quick. Dave was up next again and tried to frontside pivot the ledge which has a rail a few inches above it. SLAM. Seriously brutal slam with his tail catching on the rail.

Luckily he had a Null 5 Panel on and it saved his face. Check the bent bill! So crazy. He ended up getting up and getting it a few tries later though. We were just kinda messing around and I started hucking f/s halfcab flips. Dave started filming even though I wasn’t really serious about it yet and then I started getting closer and then it turned into a very long ordeal (kind of like this sentence). Some 70+ tries later I landed one! Ha. It did feel great though. Like really great. Really really great. Pretty neat to have to dream tricks for a spot and actually land them and get them on film.

Feeling pretty arthritic and only wanting to skate tranny I hit up Darin to see if he was skating his ramp. Darin’s friends Ivan and Ben joined. Darin didn’t skate much as he was hungover. He did grace the ramp with a bunch of his patented rock to willy tricks. I started out pretty slow bailing a lot of basics. But there were a few highlights like a first try f/s beanplant, a few front tails and front smiths. I bailed a lot of front 50s though and couldn’t quite put down the fakie pivot fakie. Ivan and Ben learned acid drops. Ivan kind of destroys it and Darin filmed this.

So yeah that pretty much summarizes Ivan’s skating minus the really long and fast grinds. Fun session although I was still pretty sore. I went to Crisis after and hung with Fuzz and John for quite awhile. It was cool. Then John and I went to Broomfield park for a mellow session. I had some new shoes. Emerica Leo Laced. I had them because my Es Accents are broken in perfect for Portland and I didn’t want to ruin them. These are cupsoles, and not as flexible as the original Laced. Oh well. We did a lot of slappy noseslide back 270 out attempts. Neither getting close, but they seemed possible if we kept working on them. We played a game of SKATE with Will and John killed it. He landed more tricks then he normally does. I was first out and blame the new shoes (ha). I then spent a long time trying treflips and eventually landed one. That was pretty much it. Fun times.

Slept horrible, worked, then dragged my stubborn ass to the rollerblade park after work. The rain was threatening, but never amounted to more then a few sprinkles. I felt beyond horrible on my skateboard. I struggled to ollie the flat bar and to front 50 the narrow ledge. I did do several noseslides on the tallest ledge in the park though and get a first try ollie onto the long main ledge that I normally can’t even ollie onto. Whew! After that I kept struggling, did a sweeper or to (Dumb and Dumber To reference) and called it a day.

Got the early shift this week. So after a nap, a smoothie dinner (motivated my Reynolds and PJ) and a visit to Crisis I met Darin and John and Broomfield park. They were warming up on the quartapotty so I joined. It was fun. John gots pivot fakies perfect now. Darin can front blunt every time. I got most of my tricks. We tried to manual the blue pad too and I ran into. It wasn’t looking good for ollies. We ended up getting some stuff. Nothing special for me until John got me to ollie into the brown slanted ledge. That was cool! I’ve wanted to do that for awhile. Then we played a game of SKATE that lasted pretty long doing tricks we don’t always do. John got me with impossible and varial flip. I got him with halfcab flip, fakie bigflip, something, nollie tre (first try!) and a fakie varial flip. We hucked a bit more after that, but left as I was getting really tired.

Jake and I went to Valmont on the way to Longmont to meet Dave. We warmed up with some tail scrapes across manual pads and not landing much. I managed the long manual and a nose manual. Jake challenged me to a game of SKATE and it didn’t go so good for him. I got him letters on front shove, fakie flip, halfcab flip, varial flip and one of the ugliest treflips I’ve done to date.

Then we went to Niwot high. It was hot and the ledge didn’t grind well. We struggled. Jake managed front tail to fakie, halfcab noseslide, a front 50 that took way too many tries for him to be happy, front 5-0 and ended on a back 50 that also took a long time. I got a crooks jib, halfcab noseslide, front 50, front 5-0, some bad front noses. Tried to ollie onto a different ledge and kickflip off, but didn’t really get the ollie up. Hucked kickflip noseslides for awhile and got remotely close. Dave showed and we pretty much just left. Doh, sorry Dave.

We went to this new spot. Those banks are steeper then they look. We started off slow not knowing what the spot would entail and it turned into a really fun session. Dave and Jake jumped over a large cable spool via hippy jump and ollie respectively then did front tail and pivot fakie. Sick. Dave also feebled a sketchy flat bar. I got a halfcab flip and then a pivot on the bank coming down past the wood. Neat. Then we skated flatground for awhile and Jake did a bunch of heelflips which he hasn’t landed in years. Rad.